Big tech companies are asking for Australian copyright laws to be watered down, to allow them to scrape Australian output – including journalism, music and books – in order to improve their AI models.
Guardian Australia this week reported on an industry proposal under which companies would commit more than $50bn in investment in datacentres and set up a $350m fund to compensate creatives in exchange for weaker copyright laws. Senator David Pocock has described it as the “ultimate dirty deal”.
The Albanese government has insisted it has no plans to weaken copyright protections, after ruling out the potential text and data mining exemption last year – but creatives are sounding the alarm. Loudest among them this week are musicians, some of whom discovered last month that their work was already being scraped.
Albanese is known for his love of Australian music. Guardian Australia spoke to some of his favourite bands to hear what they had to say to him.
Bernard Fanning from Powderfinger: ‘Please do the right thing’
In 2022, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, gave former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern a Powderfinger record during a diplomatic vinyl swap. He has also featured the band’s music in playlists, as DJ Albo.
It feels like a violation. We have always been very careful about where our music is placed, and this upends that consideration. Aside from that, it’s bad manners. A robot could never write Flame Trees, Highway to Hell, Took The Children Away or Am I Not Pretty Enough?
We have an important opportunity to put down a marker that says, “Our government is prepared to be on the side of Australian artists and storytellers”, some of the very people that help shape our cultural identity. Humans should be telling our stories, ones that come from deep thinking about our experiences and how we process them, not from data aggregations.
Anthony Albanese: you’re an avowed lover of Australian music and have made it part of your identity as a public figure. You’ve spent most of your life fighting to relieve people of disadvantage. Any partial or wholesale waiving of our rights as copyright holders would put Australian artists at a massive disadvantage. At the absolute minimum, we should have the secure legal right to opt out of this horrible idea. Please do the right thing by our past, current and future artists.
Lindy Morrison of the Go-Betweens: ‘We need new laws’
Cattle and Cane by the Go-Betweens was listed among Albanese’s top 10 Australian songs of all time. The prime minister also featured the band when guest programming Rage in 2013 and the Go-Betweens have often featured in his DJ Albo playlists.
I like what the drummer Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown) said in 2016 to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “I can dig that others try to do what I do, and am happy when people try to play what I play, but I do not appreciate not getting paid.”
I didn’t write a single Go-Betweens song…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
